


let's go steal a burial horde (of mars!)

by diktynna



Category: Bernice Summerfield (Books & Audio), Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dellah-era, Gen, Ice Warrior culture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:54:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21849241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diktynna/pseuds/diktynna
Summary: “Is it too much to ask that they’ve decided to be most gracious with loaning the jewels to St. Oscar’s for further study while sending them with an appalling lack of security?” he asked, drily.“We could only hope,” said Benny, slumping into one of the two seats at her kitchen table. “But, no.”Arriving home from a conference, Benny discovers a handful of gems stolen from the exhibit of a Martian Empress's sarcophagus hidden in the lining of her suitcase, where they definitely shouldn't be.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Classic Who Secret Santa 2019





	let's go steal a burial horde (of mars!)

**Author's Note:**

> For ivqdraws on tumblr, who requested: _bernice summerfield and irving braxiatel(very much platonic) in dellah/collection era,,, just being them,, thank u_.
> 
> Definitely Benny and Brax, definitely Dellah-era, and probably the result of rewatching too many episodes of Leverage.

Bernice Summerfield fumed. She shifted in her seat, unfolded her arms, and recrossed them in the opposite direction, scowling at anyone who caught her eye. She radiated an aura of pure annoyance that caused everyone else aboard the shuttle to avoid the seat next to her, including the person who had been assigned the seat next to her. She picked up her increasingly watered-down Proximan Ice Tea and slurped an unsatisfying sip of it through the straw.

The conference had been a bad idea from the beginning and had proceeded to grow worse when she had arrived at the venue, only a little bit hungover from the free drinks provided on the shuttle to Úvit’ie—the shuttle back, her current temporary home, did not have the same courtesy—only to find that the venue itself was a deranged growth of crystals masquerading as a hotel that threw rainbows and haloes off into every direction. It had, at one point, housed a cult that worshipped light (according to the hotel’s website) and had retained its title of Ukip’ush Kwoka—The Temple of Light in the language of Úvit’ie’s native population. The cult had abandoned it sometime in the previous century and a real estate magnate had snapped it up for pennies on the credit.

Benny had taken one look at the place and felt the tiny, minuscule headache beating on the world’s smallest kettledrum take a breath and move onto a larger timpani. She reached for the top of her head to grab her sunglasses, labouring under the assumption that, with that barrier, the crystal wouldn’t be that bad.

She had hoped, at least.

Until she realized she was already wearing said sunglasses and they weren’t helping in the least bit. She stopped pawing at the nothing on top of her head and squinted down the very long, very bright, and very headache-increasing hall toward the sign that said KWOYAS KI SOSTAK A SHOSTIKWOKTOK in disgusting neon light with various arrows pointing in various directions for various activities.

Her K’up’ikan was not very good but she was able to understand that the board was welcoming everyone to the convention. Beside it, a much more understated poster advertised the current contents featured in the Ukip’ush Kwoka’s main exhibition hall.

JEWELS OF THE RED PLANET, it said, with understated serifs.

BURIAL HOARD OF THE EMPRESS OF MARS, it continued above a hologram of a rotating sarcophagus that, even with all the jewels embedded in the gold, managed to be a much more sedate sign than the conference’s own.

 _Everyone’s capitalizing on the five hundredth anniversary_ , she thought. At least there was no chance that she’d run into Jason, find a missing ex-Minister of Defense, or an insane AI under the illusion of a planetary invasion here.

Benny shuddered the thought and then squared her shoulders. She presented herself at the front desk and smiled.

“Pi ye kiyus?” The porter’s smile was unctuous and insincere below his three eyes (each one of which could see in an entirely different spectrum than the others, now that would be a headache) on his sea-green face.

“Bernice Summerfield, here for the conference,” she said, letting her suitcase fall to the floor with a thump. She felt very grown-up and professorial by having an actual suitcase. Never mind that she had purchased it because her last rucksack had gotten to be more patch than original fabric and was closer to resembling textiles that were much more commonly seen in museums as scraps barely preserved by burial. 

The porter’s expression tightened, but he smoothly switched to Standard English. “Ah, yes, we have you in room ell-four-thirty-seven, Ms Summerfield—”

Wonderful.

“Miz? _Miz_? Do I look like a bloody ‘miz’? It’s _Professor_ Summerfield or even Doctor Summerfield. Sometimes ‘that damnable Summerfield woman,’ yes, but ‘ _miz_ ’?”

Beneath the onslaught of her words, the porter’s colour was slowly leaching out of his skin, turning that same not-quite-green that the K’up’ikan did when denied sunlight too long or were very displeased by something. Benny fought a shudder, grateful that humans didn’t wear their feelings on their skin so openly.

“Your room key, Professor Summerfield,” he said hastily, handing her a keycard and a folded brochure with the convention’s logo on it. His colour darkened back to something more appropriate for a K’up’ikan male. “The welcoming ceremony begins at—” 

She waved the brochure at him. “I can find my own way,” she said, walking toward the lift bay as fast as she could. Halfway there she groaned and turned back around. Face straight ahead, she sidled back to the front desk and grabbed her suitcase before trotting back off toward the lift, cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she tried to ignore the porter as much as possible even as he sent her a smug look.

Room L437, it turned out, was in the third spike of crystal radiating upward from the central lobby. The lift moved along at an angle, immensely disorienting and disturbing. When it came to a stop on the fourth floor, and the doors opened, Benny took a wary look out into the hallway.

It looked normal up here. As long as you ignored the utter whiteness of it all. Instead of being see-through crystal, _thank Goddess_ , Benny thought, the interior floors were of white stone with lenticular crystals studded here and there, shining in the soft glow from the ceiling.

Made wary by the sideways lift, Benny poked one foot out and tapped it along the floor, making sure that it wasn’t going to end up being tilted. The lift dinged at her, impatient with her scouting techniques. She picked her suitcase back up and stepped fully out into the hall.

She quickly found the door to her room and revealed more of that damnable crystal architecture. An entire wall of the room was clear. There was a control panel near the door that thankfully allowed her to turn it opaque.

The brochure said that the convention opening ceremonies would be later that evening which gave her several hours in which to do whatever she wanted.

“Bed,” decided Benny as she kicked off her shoes. She threw herself onto the bed and landed face-down in the massive pile of pillows that all hotels set out on their beds in a clear attempt to smother any stomach sleepers. She settled down into the nest of pillows and moved only to remove her sunglasses.

+

Several hours later, headache vanished into the ether, Benny had shimmied into a shiny dress made staider by the jacket she pulled on top, switched her earrings out for a different pair, exchanging her hoops for hoops of a slightly different thickness. She wore shoes that had enough of a heel that made her legs (freshly shaved and not a cut on them!) look longer but wouldn’t cause her to trip if she imbibed too much alcohol, her lipstick was the kind that wouldn’t come off for anything short of an industrial solvent, and she was on her third glass of convention-provided champagne that she was beginning to think wasn’t alcoholic at all and was trapped in a conversation with one of those men who looked like a pleasant old professor but secretly weren’t.

“Oh, I’m much earlier than that,” Benny said, in response to his question on what part of “our” (said with a sly look and a bit of a sneer) history she studied. “Twentieth century.”

“But that’s not your actual speciality is it?” He smirked at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Earth’s twentieth century is, well, it’s dull, isn’t it? All that fighting. One of my friends called it ‘war, war, and bore,’ and that’s really all it is.”

“ _Excuse me_ ,” Benny repeated, definitely not a question this time, and infinitely more offended. “The twentieth century is one of the pinnacles of human scientific inquiry. Without the space programmes of the USA and the USSR we wouldn’t even be standing here today.”

“Professor Summerfield is an expert in ancient Martian culture,” a woman interjected, clearly seeing the trajectory this conversation was about to take. 

Benny shot her comrade-in-struggles against old men who thought they knew everything a smile.

“Oh, so you’re here for the exhibit!” He managed to sound even more condescending. “Human sacrifice on Mars before known contact between humans and Martians, isn’t it positively ghoulish? And who knew they had a _goddess_ along with Oras and Claatris?”

Benny gritted her teeth. She was going to find the person responsible for the dig that had unearthed the golden sarcophagus and strangle them for putting about the ridiculous notion that, because the sarcophagus had been empty, anyone could see that it was a very large votary offering. 

It was all very Johann Jakob Bachofen-ian and probably just as full of bullshit, but _somehow_ the author and discoverer of this latest Martian site had managed to finagle themselves the keynote speech _and_ an exhibit. Outrageous didn't even begin to cover it.

Benny sulked the rest of the conference. She grumped through drinks at the bar, she brooded through papers by people she was glad to see, she huffed her way through the galaxy-exclusive viewing of Jewels of the Red Planet, snotted in the third row from the back all through the keynote speech on how it was entirely possible that those human skeletons found on Mars were sacrifices for their Empress’s burial, and she was sullen the entire way back to the spaceport and through the shuttle ride back to Dellah that didn’t come with free drinks.

By the time she reached her rooms at St. Oscar’s, she was more schlepping than sulking from the time change and the sheer, awful tiredness that comes from having only a small space to oneself for too long.

She unlocked and shouldered open her door before heading straight to her bedroom with her suitcase, avoiding the clothes, books, and crockery already on the floor. Wolsey meowed and wove around her feet as she walked. It was a delicate dance.

With her arms beginning to feel like jelly— _never again_ , she told herself. _Rucksacks all the way now_ —she gave one final heave to get her suitcase flat on her bed.

Unluckily, it was upside down. Even more so, Wolsey decided it was to be his new bed. He hopped up and stepped around on it, curling down into a coil of fur that blinked at her innocently.

“Off you get, Wols,” she muttered, picking Wolsey up and setting him down on her bed. He meowed in protest and set about kneading her pillows before settling himself down on them like they had been his destination all along. She managed to flip her suitcase back over so she could unzip it.

Then, in the greatest traditions of Returning Home, Benny turned her suitcase over and dumped everything in it onto her bed. The duty-free alcohol she had picked up at the spaceport was carefully wrapped in her clothing and remained intact.

She gave it a good shake and then turned it right-side-up again to run her hands around all of the extra pockets in the sides to make sure there wasn’t anything in there.

Benny frowned. 

Something wasn’t right with her luggage. There was a lump in its side. Its inside side. Sure, Benny was used to lumpy luggage but the lumps were usually caused by her and weren’t stuck in the lining of her suitcase. She poked at it. Something moved. She pushed on it and it shifted, the shape changing only slightly. It jingled faintly. 

She picked up her suitcase and headed for her kitchen table.

Wolsey followed behind her, equating ‘Benny enters kitchen’ with ‘food for Wolsey’.

She thumped her suitcase onto the kitchen table, ignoring everything else that was already on it, including a couple of mugs that she had promised herself she was going to clean before she left but she had just run out of time.

Under the harsh light, she could see into the suitcase where it looked like there was a glob of glue where someone had slit open the lining and stuck it back together.

Benny grabbed a knife from the drawer, Wolsey jumped up to sit in the suitcase to better see what was going on. With one hand, Benny kept him away and sliced the lining of her suitcase open, wincing because it was new and this was the beginning of the path of destruction that would end up with the suitcase ending up like her previous rucksacks.

She reached into the space created between her suitcase’s lining and its outer shell. “This better not be anything sharp,” she muttered to herself, gingerly wiggling her fingers around. The met something cool and hard, smooth and faceted, hiding there.

Benny closed her hand around the items and pulled them out into the light, where she could inspect them more fully.

“Oh,” she said, staring at the millions of credits she now held in her right hand, “ _bugger_.”

Three jewels of the Martian Empress’s tomb sparkled in her hand, far away from the exhibition they were supposed to be heading.

The sound of someone knocking on her door barely edged into her consciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> The K’up’ikan language is courtesy of the [Vulgar](https://www.vulgarlang.com/), which is a magical generator that allows you to create a fictional language with the click of a button. 
> 
> Oras and Claatris are Osirians who were worshipped by the Ice Warriors. Oras was Horus, whose followers preached non-violence, and Claatris is their God of War (GodEngine, The Crystal Bucephalus).
> 
> Johann Jakob Bachofen is the author of _Das Mutterecht_ , which proposed that people worshipped a mother goddess in "primaeval times" before evolving toward patriarchal religion as they became "civilised."


End file.
